Last Saturday, Liverpool, arguably the best football club in the world, won the FA Cup. (Now, I must qualify that even though I'm convinced that Liverpool IS the best football club in the world, I've added in the word "arguably" just so that I won't get a barage of hate-mails or counter claims, which of course would be false). What a game that was, and as the saying goes, Liverpool finals are never dull, how true that was. It was a real roller coaster match with Liverpool being trailing most of the time to West Ham's efficient & beautiful (but fluke) goals. You can imagine how I celebrated when Liverpool equalized and won in the end. All I can say how you imagined it is mostly likely different from how I celebrated it. Let me explain.
Here's the setting. I was watching the game in one part of our room, with Caleb asleep on the bed in the other part of the room, barely 3 metres away and my wife was on the internet just behind me.
All was calm and steady until our most consistent defender scored an own goal under pressure. "No problems!", I thought, "Liverpool can surely come back against one goal". Then West Ham's second goal went in, due to some slack defending (which is very very rare for Liverpool) and in no small part due to some sloppy goal keeping from our gaolie. Now, that's a slight problem. Now we have to score 3 goals to win it... hmmm. Wife didn't help by commenting that "eh... everytime you watch Liverpool, they end up losing, better for you not to watch". I persisted on and was rewarded with a Cisse goal. Beautiful float in ball from Gerrard, caught sweetly by Cisse and the ball flew past the West Ham goalie into the goal. "That's the way a goal should be scored, definitely better than the 2 West Ham goals", I thought. Not much celebration yet, just a fist punch into air. Wife wasn't amused.
Liverpool then went on to equalise after half time through a superb goal (show them how to do it!) and this time, the celebration was more energetic. Standing up and jumping up and down, muttering "yes! yes!" under my breath, and then quickly sitting down, anticipating the winning goal to come soon. To my horror, West Ham scored again! Through another fluke goal! Heart sank. Room was silent except for the commentators' muttering about how it was meant to be cross, surely the scorer didn't mean it, yadde yadde yadde. Wife knew better than to make fun of me or Liverpool then.
As the clock started to run down, the situation became more and more desperate. Wife was asking me about something about some cakes that she saw on the internet and which one we should buy, and I told her I can't think about that, and left it to her. It's a good thing that she's a prudent and wise wife, cos I remember agreeing to almost everything she was saying and suggesting.
90mins was up, wife had just decided she didn't want to face a gloomy husband and went to bed, and with a defeat due to 3 sloppy goals looming, the inspirational Liverpool captain struck a superb rocket shot from almost 35 metres out and boy was I up and running. Jumped up and fist punched the air a few times. Wanted to shout, but can't cos Caleb was sleeping (the sacrifices of a daddy), so I grabbed the nearest pillow and swung it above my head like a rodeo with a lasso quite a few times and ran all over the room. Caught a glimpse of my wife looking at me with bewildered look and I decided that I should share the joy and ran over to smooch her all over her face. And since Caleb was just next to her, I gave him few pecks on the cheek too. Then back to the TV to watch the extra time.
Extra time was boring as the players were all tired out. So down to penalties it went. Every West Ham miss was greeted with joy and every Liverpool goal was punctuated with "yes!". Confidence slowly grew and when Liverpool won it, I celebrated like one of the players, ran all over my pitch (the room), swung the pillow round and round, shared the joy with my wife yet again, and told Caleb in his sleep that Liverpool is the best! Hopefully he had a sweet dream of Liverpool too. Round and round I went, and wife had more than her fair share of transmitted joy. All this while, I was as silent as a cat, unbelievable but true, cos if Caleb had been woken by me, my joy would have been shortlived, my wife would've made sure of that. :)
